


A Seed is Planted, One Day in Early Spring

by leftofrevolution



Series: Hybridization [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 19:58:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3146759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftofrevolution/pseuds/leftofrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Katara refuses to compromise her ideals, Sokka admits that mistakes were made, and four members of the Red Lotus are given a future that is not entirely bereft of hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Seed is Planted, One Day in Early Spring

Katara automatically counted the number of White Lotus sentries as she approached the hastily constructed prison. Eleven, which just seemed excessive for guarding a man chained to a wall who couldn’t even bend. Likely a combination of being representative of the actual danger the man presented and overzealousness. They had found the new Avatar less than a year ago, after all, and how foolish they must feel that it hadn’t even been them to have saved her, when it finally came down to it.

They bowed respectfully at her approach and did not seem surprised when she approached the door, so Sokka or Aujak must have sent word ahead. “Master Katara.”

She smiled in her most grandmotherly way. (She had been practicing, now that Tenzin had finally decided what he wanted and gotten together with a woman who actually desired children. She thought she was getting quite good at it.) “Hello. Could you open the door, please?”

The sentry moved to do so readily enough, pulling a key from his belt and walking over to the heavy iron slab that blocked her way, but he hesitated before turning the key in the lock. “You have been told of what he’s done. What he’s capable of.”

“I have spoken to my brother in the past few weeks, yes. Now then,” and she smiled again when that didn’t seem to move him, “The door?”

Another moment of hesitation, but this time it did not seem directed at her. It was more of a flinch away from the prison itself. “He broke a sentry’s arm in two places just a few days ago. We took further precautions after that, but it would be… I would hate to see anything happen to you, Master Katara. Just please, be careful.” At her nod, he finally turned the key, and opened the door.

\--*White*--

“We got lucky, Katara,” said Sokka, collapsing heavily into his chair. She had been told that his injuries—broken leg, concussion, severe burns on his left side, countless bruises—had been looked to right after the battle by a healer she had personally trained, but he still looked tired and slightly pinched around the mouth and eyes.

He did not, however, seem to be moving in pain, so Katara let it go. They were both getting old, and it had been a stressful couple of weeks.

She still made sure to be the one who poured the white tea that Sokka’s assistant had brewed as she asked, “How so? Availuk said you couldn’t even move after what happened.”

He shrugged. “True, but in a way that’s lucky too, since it means at least I was a big enough threat to target. I wouldn’t have even been there if we hadn’t gotten a tip of what was going to happen, and neither would have Tenzin and Zuko or all those White Lotus sentries. It would’ve been Tonraq and Senna with maybe two sentries, and only the sentries would have even been awake. They would have ambushed us instead of the other way around, and based on what I saw that night, the sentries would have been taken out with no one the wiser, and Tonraq and Senna might have never even woken up. We held all the cards, we knew exactly what we would be facing and when, and it was _still_ a close thing.”

“They were that talented, then?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen skills like that since… well, since we were kids. And it’s _are_ , anyway.” At Katara’s blank look, Sokka clarified, “I still don’t know how we managed it, but we took all four of them alive.”

\--*Red*--

The room was freezing. Katara was a waterbender, a woman of the Southern Water Tribe, and that was still the first thing she noticed. Stone and especially metal were known to trap and intensify the cold, which was why the Southern Water Tribe rarely built with either, but here the walls and floor were slate, the door was iron, and the restraints encircling the prisoner’s wrists, ankles, and neck were steel, glinting faintly under the light of the torches recessed into the walls.

The prisoner himself was huddled awkwardly on the floor. The way his chains were set up gave him so little latitude away from the far wall that he couldn’t even lie down without the collar around his neck going taut, but he had done his best with what he had to work with, leaning as far away from the wall as possible with his legs curled up to his chest, his hands stuck between them to keep warm, and his forehead pressed to his knees. She could still see his breath misting out from under the fall of his hair, just as well as she could see her own. There was only one blanket, and he had it folded up underneath him to provide insulation from the floor, with only a few inches of one side folded up over the ends of his bare feet. His clothes—which seemed like they at least had once been designed for wear at the South Pole—were filthy and torn, with what remained past his elbows ripped off and wrapped under his restraints to guard against the metal touching his skin, meaning she could see the bruises discoloring large swaths of his forearms, most of which were only barely beginning to fade.

The only non-pitiable thing about the entire scene was his eyes, which became visible when he raised his head to look at her as the door closed behind her. They were hard, and unblinking, and she gave him points for effort even if the overall effect was ruined by his slightly off-kilter, swollen nose (obviously broken) and the fact that his right eye had been blacked so badly that the white of his eye was visibly red with burst blood vessels. His left had nearly gotten it worst, with a deep cut over the eyebrow that looked as if a blade had come a hair’s breadth from blinding him.

Katara sighed. If she hadn’t already been resolved when she entered the cell, the sight of its inhabitant alone might have been enough to sway her. Ever since she had children of her own, she had never been able to harden herself properly against anyone who looked as young or younger than them, and the man before her, while certainly not a child, was also visibly young enough to be her grandson, had it ever occurred to Bumi or Kya to procreate. The fact that he looked halfway to freezing to death and had obviously been beaten… that his wounded gray eyes were just a shade darker than Aang’s… well. She had come here with a purpose, and she could not forget it.

“Do you know who I am, young man?”

She half-expected him not to answer. He and his compatriots had apparently been almost admirably taciturn under the White Lotus’s… care. But still, after a few moments of studying her, the prisoner rasped, “Katara.” Then he started coughing, a dry hack that sounded painful but tapered off after a few seconds.

She ignored the sound for the moment and nodded kindly. “That’s right. And, forgive me if I’m mispronouncing it, as my brother only heard your name being called out once by one of your comrades, but you are… Zaheer, yes?”

He did not correct her.

“Zaheer,” she repeated, thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me what you were thinking, trying to kidnap little Korra?”

He said nothing, which was more or less what Korra expected. The way his body tensed, however, when Katara took a step towards him—as if he was bracing himself for a blow but was too well-trained to outright flinch—was… well. Unfortunately, also expected.

\--*White*--

“So the tip was accurate?”

Sokka nodded. “Yeah, as much as I didn’t fully believe it at the time. A combustion bender, an armless, psychic waterbender, an earthbender who could turn stone into lava… and the guy leading them. He was the only one whose name I caught. I think the waterbender called him ‘Zafur’ or ‘Zihar’ or something.”

“Those aren’t names,” Katara said. “‘Zaheer’ maybe? It’s a pretty common name in some rural parts of the eastern Earth Kingdom.”

Sokka snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“But he wasn’t a bender like the others?”

“No,” Sokka agreed, though he winced and rubbed the side of his head. “He punches harder than Suki ever did, though. Ridiculously hard to pin down, too. But he was probably the least of the threats. The combustion bender alone could have killed us all if I hadn’t knocked her out with my boomerang. She shut down Zuko entirely—unlike old Sparky Sparky Boom Man, she could firebend well enough to deflect everything Zuko had—and no one else could even get close. I’m pretty sure the earthbender would have been worse if he had more than a few pounds of rock to work with—at least one White Lotus is missing a limb because of him—and the waterbender beat down everything Tonraq threw at them like he was a rank amateur. Never saw a waterbender that agile, either. We only managed to take her and their leader—Zaheer, I mean—out once the combustion bender and the earthbender were down for the count and we managed to split them up so they couldn’t guard each other’s backs. Tonraq got Zaheer in the back of the head with a chunk of ice while he was focused on trying to take my head off, and Zuko kidney punched the waterbender with the hilts of his swords while Tenzin was distracting her with some air blasts.

“I’m not sure we’ve ever had a fight that close, and that’s considering that until the combustion bender went down, I think they were more focused on trying to escape than trying to win. I know Zuko and I aren’t as young as we used to be, but _damn_. For that kind of talent to accumulate without anyone noticing…”

Katara pursed her lips. “Someone had to be hiding it.”

\--*Red*--

At the sight of Zaheer’s restrained flinch, Katara sighed and started getting out some supplies she had brought with her, though after a moment she continued her slow plod over to his side. “Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Zaheer failed to look reassured, his eyes still trained unblinkingly on her hands, so she held out the blanket she had pulled out of her backpack. It was thick and fringed with polar bear dog fur, and from the way he had been shivering when she entered his cell she expected him to snatch it out of her grip as soon as it was within reach, but instead he stared at it for a moment before his eyes widened in unmistakable panic and his gaze jerked to what her other hand was doing, which was nothing.

 _He’s expecting this to be a trick_ , Katara thought, as dispassionately as she was able, which wasn’t very. When after a few seconds he still didn’t take it, though his eyes occasionally tracked to her face before returning swiftly to her hands, she shrugged and just tossed the blanket over his knees before uncorking one of her water skins and placing it at his side. When he just continued to stare at her (though she noticed he did move his feet to better tuck them under the blanket), she said, “I am enough of a healer to know what dehydration looks like, and I am not here to watch you die. Drink some of that, then sit still. I want to take a look at some of your injuries.”

She may have still been new to the idea of being a grandmother, but she had been a mother for nearly fifty years in addition to being forced to take care of Sokka in her youth, and thus had mastered the tone of voice that was less commanding and more a simple stating of The Way Things Were Going to Go. It had come in handy in far more situations than just making sure her children did what they were told—it turned out there were a lot of people in the world who had never fallen out of the habit of instinctively obeying their parents—so she had never fallen out of practice with it. As such, the water skin was already most of the way to Zaheer’s lips before he even seemed to notice that his arm had moved. He stopped short of actually pouring any water into his mouth, staring first at her and then at the water skin with narrowed eyes, but when his tongue darted out instinctively to wet his lips—which were so dry that Katara could see a trail of blood where the lower one had cracked open and dripped down his chin—he seemed to register on a more conscious level how thirsty he was, and his mouth curled bitterly at what seemed to be nothing in particular before he tilted his head back and began pouring the contents of the water skin down his throat.

Katara stood by patiently for about ten seconds before reaching out and tugging the water skin away from his mouth. “Stop. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

His hand tightened instinctively around the water skin, resisting her pull for a moment, but when she made no move to actually take it from him, he relaxed and, as ordered, sat still while she kneeled by his side and pulled the cork out of her second water skin, laying it on the floor next to her as she looked him over as best she could. This wasn’t very, considering how unwise it seemed to ask him to take off what remained of his shirt and coat so she could have a better look at him. He wouldn’t do it—neither would she, if she were him, and had done to her what had been done to him—and then she would either have to force the issue or compromise some of the authority she was trying to exude, neither of which sounded like attractive prospects. So she didn’t push it. His breathing was even, at least, even if it was a little ragged, so any injuries to his torso could probably wait, if they hadn’t killed him already. All of his injuries could wait, really, but as much as she was a healer, her purpose here had very little to do with taking away Zaheer’s physical pains. It was just a means to an end. The fact that it soothed her heart to do so was irrelevant.

She was careful to be deliberate and clinical in her movements as she grasped his free hand—the left—by the wrist and turned it over, examining it from all angles. At least three of the fingers were broken, though someone—likely Zaheer himself—had tried (and largely failed) to pull them back into alignment so they wouldn’t heal crooked and leave him crippled. The shape of the bruises made it fairly obvious that “Someone stepped on this hand.”

He nodded, his mouth twisting again, though this time the bitterness seemed more outwardly directed. “One of my esteemed hosts.” His voice still rasped, though this time, at least, he didn’t start coughing before he could get out more than one word. His broken nose definitely wasn’t doing him any favors, though; she doubted he regularly sounded that nasal. “The light-eyed firebender. He didn’t appreciate me breaking his friend’s arm.”

Katara kept her voice light as she asked, her hand still delicately wrapped around his wrist, “And what did his friend do to deserve getting his arm broken?”

Zaheer’s grin was more of a bearing of teeth. “He came close enough for me to do so.” At Katara’s raised eyebrow and glance around that conveyed her awareness of her own proximity to him, some of the burning fire in Zaheer’s eyes receded and he looked away. “He also-” Zaheer gestured vaguely with his water skin at his blacked right eye and an even more general sweep down the side of his body.

Katara didn’t let her expression shift, though she made a mental note of what was likely extensive trauma under his coat. “I see.” When he looked back at her, she smiled her most grandmotherly smile just as she had to the sentry outside, which really must have gotten quite good because when she raised his hand by the wrist in front of his sightline and moved to grip his broken index finger with her other hand, he just set his jaw instead of pulling away, which she took as tacit consent to sharply yank the bones into place.

He didn’t scream, though he breathed out sharply through his nose (and almost immediately seemed to regret it, as by his wince he only then remembered that it, too, was broken). More alarming was the way his eyes began to lose focus as she did the same to the middle finger, then the ring finger, each setting followed by a quick exhalation (now through the mouth) that did little to hide how much she knew it must hurt, though he seemed aware enough when she bended the water out of her spare water skin and began to heal the breaks that she didn’t bother reaching for her smelling salts.

He remained silent through the healing and the careful manipulation of his fingers—always check your work, as she had told so many of her students—that followed. It wasn’t until she bended her water up to the right side of his face to take care of his black eye that he said, so quietly that she could only hear him because she was kneeling at his side, “So. Are you the carrot then?”

When she just gave him a blank look and turned back to realigning the broken blood vessels in his face, he continued in a low, hurried ramble, the words spilling out as if a dam had burst, “I’ll admit you are a lot more pleasant than the stick, but if you think that just fixing the damage done by your beloved White Lotus is enough to get me to talk-”

“You’re talking now,” Katara pointed out calmly, which was enough to get his jaw to snap shut.

\--*White*--

“So you think they’re part of some bigger group?”

Sokka snorted. “A bunch of kids at best in their early twenties hiding that kind of talent, then finding out enough about the new Avatar’s location and situation to come up with a kidnapping plan? At the very least they have informants close to the White Lotus. Not to mention whoever gave us the tip, since that alone heavily implies that there are more people involved than the four we captured.”

Katara frowned. “What has you so convinced this was a kidnapping plot? Plenty of people want the Avatar dead outright.”

“The tip mentioned it was a kidnapping. Also…” Sokka pulled out a drawer in his desk and pulled out a blowpipe along with a pile of darts. Two of them were fletched with blue feathers, while all the others had red. “All of this was found on Zaheer. The red ones are shirshu-spit. The blue ones contain a sedative with a dosage appropriate for a five-year-old. If they wanted to kill her, they wouldn’t have even needed to get close. The combustion bender could have just blown up the Tonraq and Senna’s tent and killed everyone in it. I mean, no one was in there, but _they_ didn’t know that, the way we had things set up.”

That just made Katara frown harder. “So someone sends a waterbender, a firebender, an earthbender, and a skilled, non-bending martial artist, with the benders very possibly being the most talented of their generation and all of them being extremely dangerous, to kidnap the Avatar so they can do… what?”

Sokka shrugged helplessly. “We don’t know. They aren’t talking. And trust me, the White Lotus has been trying _really_ hard to get them to talk.”

\--*Red*--

The white of Zaheer’s right eye was back to the proper color by the time Katara was done, the swelling around the eye faded to nothing. She briefly considered the cut above his left eye before deciding to leave it—it had nearly finished scarring over and didn’t seem to be in any danger of festering—and instead moved directly on to his broken nose. He had at least managed to set that properly, so it was the work of only a minute or two before she felt confident about leaving it to finish healing the rest of the way on its own. “I heard you were hit on the back of the head. Can you focus properly? Any lingering pain or swelling?”

He shook his head, though the suspicion was back in his eyes and posture, his body bent over the water skin she had given him and his newly-healed fingers curling in the folds of the polar bear dog fur-fringed blanket. Katara ignored this and just asked, “How about your extremities? Any loss of feeling from exposure?”

Zaheer ignored her in turn. “Why are you doing this? Do you honestly think I’m going to believe this sudden display of _benevolence_ ,” he spit the word as if it were a curse, “From the White Lotus and tell you everything you want to know? I’ve held out for this long; you aren’t going to break me with your false kindness.” From the way he shook, however—no longer from the cold—when she looked at him, she suspected that he was trying to convince himself as much as her. It just made her wonder further at the White Lotus’s tactics, that this meager show of compassion was enough to crack open his defenses, however slightly.

“I’m not White Lotus,” she replied calmly, “Though I suppose to you that’s academic right now. But I wouldn’t goad me if I were you, young man.” She leaned closer, and though he did not shrink away, his eyes flickered away once before he could meet her gaze. “I think, perhaps, that they weren’t asking the right questions.” Or maybe they weren’t asking them in the right _way_.

“So tell me, if you won’t say why you were after little Korra. What was wrong with leaving her where she was? Or are you and your comrades monsters that would snatch a little girl away from her loving parents?”

The accusation made his eyes flash, and though he did not stop shaking, it was obviously now out of anger instead of repressed… whatever. “We weren’t taking her from her _parents_.”

He realized at once that he had done exactly what she had wanted him to, his face—now free of most of its bruises—obvious in its flush of shame, his jaw clamping shut over any other words that might escape. But he had said enough that she had found out what she wanted to know.

First: That she was dealing with a man, and likely with a group, that saw themselves as having a righteous cause. No one became that indignant without even a trace of guilt if they didn’t have total belief in what they were doing. No one held out for weeks under torture if they were mercenaries for hire or just working for a paycheck. Whatever else he was, Zaheer was a believer, even if she didn’t know _what_ he believed in, and based on the similar lack of success the White Lotus had achieved with the others, his allies were likely the same.

Second: “So you were trying to get Korra away from the White Lotus.” Zaheer seemed determined by that point to not allow his expression let anything else slip, but Katara knew she was right. “Well, I’m sorry to tell you that you just played right into their hands. All you managed to do was make things worse.”

\--*White*--

“The White Lotus are really freaking out over this whole incident. Tonraq and Senna aren’t doing any better. Tonraq has already OK’d the White Lotus taking Korra into their protection at their Southern Water Tribe compound.”

At that, Katara had to blink. “Didn’t he turn them down when they tried to insist on taking Korra into their custody when they found her last year? Both Tonraq and Senna thought that Korra was far too young to start on her Avatar training already.”

Sokka shrugged. “I guess this whole kidnapping scare showed him that the Order had a point. Hopefully it won’t have to be for too long before she can go back to living with her parents; I can’t imagine whatever group is after Korra can have anything more dangerous to throw at us than what they already have, and the leader of the White Lotus’s Southern Water Tribe division seems pretty confident that at least one of the prisoners will break before they ship ‘em off to the more permanent prisons the White Lotus is having built right now.”

Katara stared at her brother. The sense of disquiet she’d felt stirring ever since Sokka had mentioned the White Lotus’ interrogations began to roil. “Built? By the White Lotus? Sokka, I can understand having them question these people, but this crime was directed against a member of the Nanumik Southern Water Tribe in Nanumik Tribe territory. The prisoners are by right _your_ responsibility.”

Sokka had always been incredibly bright. He had also occasionally needed the obvious pointed out to him, which was why Katara wasn’t terribly surprised to see him blink as if the thought had never even occurred to him. Still, he rallied quickly. “Korra may be a member of our tribe, but she’s also the Avatar, and you know as well as I do that Aang tasked the White Lotus with keeping her safe. We don’t have the resources to _hold_ benders of this quality; there isn’t even anywhere at the South Pole we could keep the waterbender that she wouldn’t have access to water to bend, and the cost of building prisons that could hold the others, not to mention guarding them and keeping them fed… the Nanumik alone can’t afford it, and the other tribes have no reason to contribute. The White Lotus is an ancient, internationally-backed society. They can keep these criminals away from Korra, and since the other option is killing them, which you _know_ Aang wouldn’t-”

Katara tried and failed to keep her interruption from sounding as frigid as she felt. “I am getting tired of you playing Aang like a trump card, Sokka.”

Sokka, to his credit, seemed to sense he was treading on thin ice, and quieted. He did not, however, concede any ground, and unfortunately, he did have a point. After a long moment, she sighed. “Can I at least see the plans for these prisons? Even if you are ceding the supervision and care of these criminals to the White Lotus, I want to make sure it’s being done right.”

Sokka nodded, obviously relieved that the argument hadn’t exploded in his face. “Of course. I know the archivist at the White Lotus’ compound has some copies. I can arrange to have you visit him immediately. The prisons won’t be done for another few weeks anyway.” He cracked a grin at her. “Apparently it’s not easy to hold people who can shoot explosion beams from their forehead or turn rock into molten lava.”

Katara did her best to smile back, but her disquiet still sat heavily in the pit of her stomach.

\--*Red*--

“I don’t know what you heard, but before you and your little team tried to kidnap Korra, the only real access the White Lotus had to her was a few sentries assigned to guard her. The White Lotus wanted her more directly in their care, but her parents were against it. Your actions have led to them seeing things more from the White Lotus’ point of view. After all, if a group of dangerous criminals are willing to go after Korra when she’s just a small child, then she’s never had a chance for a real childhood at all. Best to have her safely ensconced away with those that know what’s best for her and start with her training as soon as possible so she can protect herself against any further threats.”

Katara didn’t bother stopping her examination of Zaheer as she spoke, running her hand carefully over the back of his skull to check for bumps or fractures. She was very aware, however, that the increasingly troubled look in his eyes had nothing to do with any physical injury. “That wasn’t what-” He cut himself off before he said anything useful, but Katara still knew an opening when she saw one.

“Did you honestly think that, even if you succeeded, kidnapping the Avatar would turn out _well_?”

\--*White*--

“What the _fuck_ , Sokka?!”

Her brother—who had obviously been dozing in his chair before she walked in and slammed the door behind her—startled and nearly fell to the floor. Katara ignored this in favor of throwing the pile of construction paper onto his desk. “How could you _ever_ have approved these? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Sokka blinked at her, still looking half asleep as he absentmindedly scrubbed drool out of his beard. “I- what? Katara, what are you talking about?”

“The prison plans for the four who tried to kidnap Korra! How could you ever think that-” When the confused look in Sokka’s eyes didn’t fade, Katara had to blink in turn. “You haven’t even seen these, have you.”

Sokka shrugged, looking unsure as to whether he should be feeling self-conscious or on the defensive. “It’s been an exhausting few weeks, the first of which I spent half of asleep recovering from injuries that those four caused. And since Aang trusted the White Lotus to do right by the new Avatar, I thought-”

Katara slammed her hand down on the pile of paper, startling Sokka into silence. “Aang,” Katara hissed, once she was sure she had Sokka’s attention, “Would _never_ have allowed these prisons to be built. Now take five minutes out of your goddamn nap and look at how the White Lotus have betrayed _your_ friend’s and _my_ husband’s trust in them.”

Sokka did as he was told. Katara watched with some bitter satisfaction as the furrow of visible irritation between his eyebrows smoothed out and his lips thinned into a nearly imperceptible line.

It was sometime after five minutes had passed that he finally looked up, his eyes dark. “Katara… I swear to you, I had no idea.”

“You see it then?” The hard knot in Katara’s stomach loosened itself, just a little. “What this is?”

This time, Sokka’s confusion was even more palpable. “How could I not?”

“Their archivist didn’t. Nor did the one architect I managed to track down, the one who designed the waterbender’s prison. He thought his ideas were ‘sensible precautions.’”

Katara hadn’t seen Sokka look so incensed in decades. He shoved himself to his feet and threw the papers back down on the desk in an unconscious mirror of her earlier actions. “‘Precautions?’ These are atrocities on a worse level than what the Fire Nation did to its prisoners during the Hundred Year War! What, did the White Lotus take a look at the sections of my memoirs that talked about the Boiling Rock and what the Fire Nation did to Haru and his dad, to our waterbending _tribesmen_ , and think, ‘We should take out all the humane bits and only leave in the complete isolation and the most horrifying conditions?’ And the White Lotus want to put actual _people_ into these prisons? For _years_? No one could come out of any of these places and still be sane.”

“No,” said Katara quietly. “Not for years.” When Sokka blinked at her, she clarified, working to keep her voice even, “At least the archivist and the architect were under the impression that these prisons were meant to house those four indefinitely.”

\--*Red*--

“The entirety of the White Lotus would dedicate itself to hunting you down.”

“Better to live on the run than have Korra under _their_ influence,” Zaheer retorted. “They would have worn down her parents sooner or later, and even before then they’d always be able to whisper their poison into her ear.”

“They would have found you,” Katara pointed out. “Your group isn’t inconspicuous, and the White Lotus has a lot of support in all four nations. Eventually you would have been caught, and then we’d be right back here, except that the White Lotus would have even more justification for holding onto Korra and her parents would have even more reason to listen to them.

“Honestly, if your goal was to keep Korra away from the White Lotus’s influence, you would have been better served staying away entirely. Now she is getting settled into a White Lotus compound and will be there for the foreseeable future. As for and your friends…

“Have you been told what they have planned for you?”

From the way Zaheer’s eye went dark before he shook his head, Katara could tell it was not so much _no, I don’t_ so much as _please, don’t_. But still she continued on calmly as she leaned back into a more comfortable sitting position, keeping her gaze trained on his face.

“The prison they’re building for you is relatively humane, all things considered. True, it is completely enclosed to the point you will only ever see other people or, well, _anything_ when they come to deliver your food once a day, but it should at least be insulated from the elements.

“Your friends won’t be quite so lucky. A wooden boat miles from land for the earthbender, and I’ve yet to meet an earthbender who doesn’t get seasick. They’ll want to keep an eye on him—I think they’re more afraid of your friends escaping than you—so his cell will be fairly open. But at least the weather is fairly moderate in that part of the world, when it isn’t the monsoon season.

“It’s harder, to keep a waterbender and a firebender from bending. Only extremely dry air will do it for a skilled waterbender, and you have to make sure they never get enough water to bend. You need heat along with dry air for that, to ensure that they can’t accumulate what little water they are given before it evaporates. The active volcano they’ve selected in the Fire Nation seems a bit extreme for that, but I suppose they want to make sure she has nowhere to go, should she ever manage to break open her cell door.

“As for the firebender-”

Zaheer’s hands convulsed, making some of the contents of the water skin still in his grip spill out onto the floor next to them. Neither of them took the time to look at it, though Katara politely stopped talking as she waited, watching Zaheer open and then close his mouth before finally managing, “Stop.” Despite the command in his tone, his eyes were pleading.

Katara smiled kindly again, but shook her head. “Do you think me not saying it means it won’t happen? That’s the logic of a child. I think you should know what your actions have led to. What consequences have been visited upon those who were foolish enough to follow you.”

Zaheer shook his head. “They weren’t _following_ me. We’re-” He cut himself off, but unlike similar instances before, after a moment he continued without prompting. “The stories have never painted you as cruel. You’re talking to me for a _reason_.”

Katara raised an eyebrow. “You sound so sure. And here I thought the White Lotus would have asked you much of the same questions. They wouldn’t have hidden your fate from you, either; I’ve spoken to enough of them to know that it would have occurred to at least a few of them that slightly nicer accommodations could be used as a bribe to get at least one of you to talk.” And she already had a pretty good inkling as to why that had so completely failed.

For the first time since she had entered his cell, Zaheer aligned his entire body towards her, his body language opening up in a way Katara knew to be deliberate; though he didn’t smile, there was a new light in his eyes, and that was when Katara realized on some level she had him.

The reason the White Lotus had tried to sell her on for why the non-bender of the group needed his own specialized cell was that the people they had managed to track down who had interacted with the four would-be kidnappers on their journey to the South Pole had painted Zaheer as incredibly charismatic, and the White Lotus didn’t want him exposed to a general prison population where he might gain a following.

Before, he had been valiantly trying (though completely failing, once she figured out what approach to take) to stay reticent, the same tactic he had more successfully adopted when dealing with his White Lotus interrogators. Now she had finally done enough to convince him that he finally had access to something he hadn’t seen since being thrown into his cell three weeks ago, and had likely thought he wouldn’t ever again: A sympathetic and open-minded ear. He did not seem so much a fool that he would let such an opportunity slip through his fingers. “You said it yourself: You aren’t White Lotus.”

\--*White*--

“Indefinitely,” Sokka repeated, as if he wasn’t quite sure he had heard her right.

Katara nodded. “In a horrifying way, it’s interesting how the decisions the White Lotus have made seem to have no basis in any relevant justice system; while our tribe doesn’t have any precedent to work with regarding kidnapping charges, the Northern Water Tribe has documented similar incidents in the past. In cases of kidnapping where there were injuries but no deaths incurred, the longest sentence that has ever been given is eleven years imprisonment, and that was for when the target was the chieftain’s youngest son.”

“Korra is the Avatar, though,” Sokka said, as if trying to find some thread of sanity in what the White Lotus had planned. “And a _lot_ of people were hurt. Not to mention I’m pretty sure that Zaheer guy was actually trying to kill me at the end.”

“Korra being the Avatar would make no difference to Northern Water Tribe law, and attempted murder charges wouldn’t stick in any real court,” Katara pointed out. “You said it yourself: they were trying to run. And based on how you’ve described their skillsets, if they _were_ trying to kill people, we would have a body count. Zaheer might have been trying for it by the end, but by then he was desperate.”

\--*Red*--

Katara nodded amiably. “True enough. And I can’t say I agree with all of their policies. Korra is a social little girl; I can’t imagine she’ll flourish being as isolated as she is in the White Lotus’s compound.”

“There’s good reason for the Avatar to not be told what they are until they’re sixteen. This Avatar was always going to be raised under the auspices of her divine nature; that was unavoidable the moment she bended anything but water. But the White Lotus will raise her to think that obligates her.” Zaheer’s throat chose that moment to remind him that he was still severely dehydrated, as it was then that he started coughing again and had to pause to finish off the last of the water Katara had given him.

“You don’t think the Avatar has a duty to the people of the world?” Katara asked mildly, as soon as he stopped sounding like he was about to hack up his lungs.

Zaheer coughed once more to clear his throat before saying, “I do, but only as much as I think anyone in a position to effect great change has a duty to wield that power as wisely and as much to the benefit of the people as possible. That is _not_ what the White Lotus will teach her. They’re puppets and tools of the current regimes of the different nations’ governments. How could she learn anything from that but the notion that anything those governments visit upon their people is justified, since the White Lotus does nothing in response to even the greatest atrocities?”

“And yet whatever group you’re a part of still represents a threat,” Katara pointed out. “While there might be a danger in Korra being raised by those who adhere to an unfortunately uncompromising ideology, both her parents and I believe any risk of her being taken away from her family entirely is much greater.”

Zaheer stared at her for a long moment, though his gaze seemed focused inward with something working behind his eyes. Katara, for her part, sat still and waited, and it wasn’t terribly long, in the grand scheme of things, before Zaheer obviously came to some sort of decision and said with a depressing finality, “That risk is very small, if it exists at all. No one who has the power to represent a threat to her and her family is in any position to act.”

\--*White*--

“Tactically speaking, it was his only move,” Sokka agreed. “I was the only one who managed to land a hit on the combustion bender. If I went down for the count and he was able to rouse the combustion bender, he could have carried the earthbender out and they all could have made their escape. A lot of the White Lotus had been taken out of the fight by then by the combustion bender and the earthbender, so they weren’t really in a position to block any more escape attempts. If the combustion bender was up and able to try and blast anyone who got too close, they probably could have made it out by that point.”

“Especially if they left the earthbender behind.”

Sokka shook his head. “Nah, they wouldn’t have.” When Katara stared at him quizzically, he elaborated, “They were all running defense for each other. It’s the reason Tonraq couldn’t get a shot off against the combustion bender and we had to split up the waterbender and Zaheer at the end. Also, besides the earthbender swearing when they first noticed us and the waterbender calling out Zaheer’s name to draw his attention after the earthbender went down, none of them said a thing the entire fight, but they still coordinated all of their tactics. No group fights like that without years of practice and _lot_ of trust.” Sokka winced and rubbed the side of his head again in what fortunately seemed to be more the memory of pain than the reality of it. “Not to mention the look on Zaheer’s face after I knocked out the combustion bender. It might have been the tactically sound thing to target me, but I’m pretty sure he was just pissed off. I also think the White Lotus sentry who managed to drill the earthbender through the shoulder ten seconds later is missing part of his face more out of the waterbender’s spite than anything.

“It’s part of the reason I insisted on them being housed so far apart from each other and the guards of each not being told where the others prisoners were being held. If any of them manage to get out of their cells, I’d bet my sword that the first thing they do is attempt to break out their friends.” He smiled, a little sadly. “Guess I should have known something was off with what we were doing when I started thinking like that.”

“Did you tell the White Lotus that they could be used against each other?”

Sokka shook his head. “It didn’t seem relevant to their interrogations… though in retrospect, I guess I was just fooling myself. It wouldn’t have been relevant to any interrogations _I_ did, but if the White Lotus would approve of something like these prisons, I doubt they’d have any qualms about using threats against any of these kids as leverage on the others.”

\--*Red*--

Katara smiled. “Thank you for being so forthcoming. If it’s nicer accommodations in the prison the White Lotus is building for you that you want, I’m sure-”

“What I want,” Zaheer interrupted, “Is for you to take Korra far away from the White Lotus and raise her somewhere as a normal child. She can’t be an Avatar of the people if she is completely ignorant of the problems they face and thinks herself apart from them, and that is all the White Lotus will teach her.”

“That isn’t my decision, unfortunately.”

Zaheer’s eyes squeezed shut, and he exhaled sharply through his nose in what was probably exasperation, though it also had a disturbing resemblance to barely-suppressed desperation. “It shouldn’t be the White Lotus’s, either,” he said, quietly.

“It isn’t. It’s her parents’. And Tonraq and Senna would never agree to what you have asked. They trust in Aang’s belief in the White Lotus too much.

“You will have to ask me for something else. Something I have the capacity to give you.”

Zaheer scrubbed his hand over his face and took another deep breath, slowly. It was only because Katara was listening for it that she heard his breath catch, just slightly, before he ground out, “I was responsible for everything. My- the others, they were just trying to help me. They didn’t know what they were getting into.

“Let them go. Please.”

Katara just shook her head. “You know I can’t authorize that. Even if I believed you, there would be too great a threat of them breaking you out and us having to deal with you going after Korra all over again. Your comrades are too dangerous to just let walk around free after they participated in an attempted kidnapping of the Avatar.”

If, when Zaheer’s hand jerked out, he had actually been intending to hit her, Katara wasn’t entirely sure she would have been able to stop him. She had been watching him very closely, but her eyes had been focused on his face, and he had the kind of excellent muscle control that meant he didn’t tense before he moved. As it was, she was just able to keep herself from flinching back in surprise when the hand that had spent most of their conversation wrapped around a water skin snapped out and took a tight grip on her sleeve, twisting it slightly to catch her wrist. There was something despairing and slightly unhinged in his eyes as he hissed, “If you can’t keep the Avatar away from the White Lotus or my friends out of those hells that have been devised for them, what _good_ are you?”

Katara stared back at him calmly. She couldn’t find it within herself to be afraid. She had become much better at reading people over the years, and Zaheer did not strike her as the sort of individual that would hurt an old woman if it gained him nothing, even if he did seem to be teetering unfortunately close to some sort of precipice. “Let go.”

He glared at her for another long moment before letting his hand drop back to his side, his body hunching in on itself almost to the extent that it had when she had first entered his cell. Katara, for her part, shook out her sleeve, sighed deeply, and said, “If you had been listening properly, young man, you would know that that _wasn’t_ what I said.”

\--*White*--

It was then that an idea that had been forming in the back of Katara’s mind ever since she had first seen the White Lotus’s prison plans solidified itself within her heart. “Sokka. You know we can’t leave those four with the White Lotus. They’re criminals and they’ve done something terrible, but they’ve killed nobody, and not even _you_ , who were hurt more than most by them, seem to think they’re irredeemable monsters. After a few years in those prisons the White Lotus have planned for them, do you really think that will still be the case?”

Sokka could only shake his head, looking sad and helpless and old when before his eyes had twinkled just as brightly as they had in their youth. “We can’t _hold_ them, Katara. We just can’t. I can talk to Zuko, maybe, about having some Fire Nation resources allocated towards this project, but…” he trailed off, and Katara knew he was tabulating exactly in his head how expensive the recent rebuilding of the Fire Nation’s capital in the wake of the recent earthquake had been, and how little money Zuko would have to spare for non-Fire Nation concerns.

“I only need you to do one thing, Sokka.”

Sokka smiled at her weakly. “Yeah? What’s that?”

She pulled out one last sheet of paper and slid it across his desk. “Sign this.”

\--*Red*--

Under Zaheer’s incredulous stare, out of that same sleeve he just moments before had been gripping so tightly, Katara pulled a small, tightly wrapped scroll (now somewhat crushed) and held it out to him. Zaheer took it from her gingerly as if he half-expected it to bite him before untying the bow that held it closed and unrolling it, his eyes squinting in the poor light as he scanned its contents, though after less than half a minute they had blinked so wide that she could see the whites of his eyes all around his pupils. Katara waited patiently for him to finish, which didn’t take long; there wasn’t much there to read.

When Zaheer spoke again, he had to swallow twice before he could get his voice to work, and even then it was back to a low rasp. “What is this?”

\--*White*--

Sokka was a fast reader; Katara barely had time to rearrange herself in her chair and steal a sip of his cooled green tea before he was staring at her worriedly across his desk, his pen as of yet untouched. “Are you sure about this, Katara?”

Katara narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you think I would be asking you to sign that if I wasn’t?”

Sokka sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know, but… twelve years is a long time. And they may not be the worst people on the planet, but they’re still a group of dangerous criminals. Having to deal with them, all alone, for so long… I don’t think in good conscience I can sign this.”

Katara shook her head. “I won’t be dealing with this alone, I promise you. And I have some ideas for how to make them easier to handle, but I have to talk to some people first.” When her brother did not look immediately convinced, she reached across the desk and took his hand, clasping it lightly before she said, “Sokka. These four have done something incredibly foolish that is difficult to forgive, and they present a risk to a very special little girl, but we know what happens when you take something young and bright and try to lock it away forever in the dark.

“Hama was very possibly the most brilliant waterbender alive. She should have been the shining light of our tribe, but the Fire Nation twisted her into something unrecognizable. I told myself a long time ago that I would never let what happened to her happen to anyone else, ever again.”

“And what the White Lotus has planned is worse,” Sokka whispered, his hand closing tightly around hers. He smiled wetly. “My little sister. You never could turn your back on people who needed you.” He squeezed once more before letting go, and only then did he finally reach for his pen.

\--*Red*--

**I, Chief Sokka of the Nanumik Southern Water Tribe, on the** 5th **day of the month of Monkey in the year 158 AG, Year of the Horse, do hereby proclaim the four individuals [depictions available on request to the Nanumik Tribe historian] who entered Nanumik Tribe territory without permission on the 19th day of the month of Sheep earlier this year, guilty of the crimes of attempted kidnapping of Avatar Korra, and assault and battery against sentries of the White Lotus’s Southern Water Tribe division as well as against myself, Nanumik warrior Tonraq, Airbending Master Tenzin, and Fire Lord Zuko.**

**In light of these crimes committed within Nanumik Tribe territory against members and allies of my tribe, and having been bequeathed with full authority to dispense justice by Airbending Master Tenzin and Fire Lord Zuko—the only parties harmed who do not fall under my authority as Nanumik Chieftain—I do hereby sentence the four perpetrators to twelve years’ confinement and commit them to the custody and supervision of Waterbending Master Katara of the Nanumik Southern Water Tribe, for execution of their sentence in whatever manner she sees fit.**

**By the order of Chief** Sokka

Once it was obvious that Zaheer was just rereading the second paragraph of the scroll over and over again, Katara plucked it out of his hands, rolled it up, and stuck it back in her sleeve. “I told you I didn’t agree with all of the White Lotus’s policies. My brother shares many of my opinions, and once his attention was drawn to some recent… problematic decisions the White Lotus has made, he was easy enough to persuade that they shouldn’t be responsible for you.”

The unstable glint had left Zaheer’s eyes, but his wariness remained. “If you’ve had that since before you even came and spoke to me, what was the point of all this? Are you still trying to decide how you will ‘see fit’ to execute our sentence?”

“In some part.”

\--*White*--

The leader of the White Lotus’s Southern Water Tribe division was a short, surly waterbender about fifteen years younger than Katara by the name of Aujak. He had been one of the three to discover Korra in the first place and was well on track to becoming Grand Lotus within a few years, and as such seemed to think he should have primary say in dictating the course Korra’s life should take. Aang had liked him, but Aang had always been somewhat prone to flattery and was predisposed to like everyone besides; Katara had always thought of Aujak as self-important and kind of an ass.

The stare he sent her way over the table of the White Lotus compound’s largest greeting room, once he finished reading Sokka’s scroll, did nothing to improve her opinion of him. “I don’t know what you said to your brother, Master Katara, but he _did_ hand over custody of those four criminals to the White Lotus. That isn’t something even a chieftain of the Southern Water Tribe can just take back.”

Katara smiled at him. She had gotten better at dealing with people she disliked over the years, but it still probably came more across as a threat display than she was really going for. “He put them in your custody for _interrogation_ , Aujak. It was never stated that they were to remain permanently in your… care.

“And even if that wasn’t the case,” she continued, when for a second it looked like he was about to interject, “The White Lotus only have authority at the South Pole as has been given to them by the Southern Water Tribe confederation of chieftains. You are still subject to the individual authority of the chieftains in whose territory you operate, and you have chosen—in great part I’m sure due to my father and brother’s generosity in the past—to place your compound and all four of those makeshift prisons holding the criminals within Nanumik Tribe territory.

“As such, my brother can grant and take away any allowances he has granted the White Lotus in regards to this matter as he chooses. And he has decided, in this instance, that I am better suited to be responsible for the criminals’ supervision. Sokka has found some of your recent decisions regarding their treatment… questionable.”

At that, Aujak puffed up almost exactly like a polar leopard who had just been challenged for his territory. Which wasn’t, Katara thought wryly, as inaccurate an analogy as it should have been. “You and your brother may find the White Lotus’s tactics somewhat harsh, _Master_ Katara, but every one of our actions is in pursuit of Avatar Aang’s, your _husband’s_ , directive to us to protect the next Avatar. If that means not being terribly concerned with the comfort and well-being of a bunch of terrorists who tried to kidnap a little girl-”

If Katara hadn’t had much patience with Sokka attempting to invoke Aang as a method of persuasion, she had none for when Aujak—who had met Aang a total of twice—tried to do the same. “These so-called terrorists are still _people_ , Aujak, and as such deserve being treated with at least a basic level of human decency. For that matter, if these _tactics_ you are so quick to defend were even minimally effective, we could stop speaking of them in such vague terms because we would at least have their _names_ after nearly three _weeks_ of questioning.”

While Aujak stood there looking stunned, Katara took a deep breath and let it out through her nose, wresting a smile back onto her face through sheer force of will. “I understand your… zealousness when it comes to protecting Korra. She is a sweet little girl and she deserves the best from you. It is not your dedication I question, just a few of your methods.

“As your organization provides the greatest line of defense for Korra, I was thinking a merging of our resources to deal with this situation would be most appropriate. What I have in mind will cost you a great deal less than finishing the construction of those prisons you had planned, not to mention the expense of staffing them with sufficient numbers of sentries. I think, once you hear my suggestions, you will see the wisdom of doing things slightly differently.

“First of all…” Katara slid across the table a sheet of construction paper, different than the ones that had contained the White Lotus’s plans. Aujak, still looking slightly dazed at her outburst—Katara didn’t think he had ever seen her angry before—took it without comment.

His eyes at first seemed to alight on the paper without actually seeing it, but after a moment, his eyes focused and he started skimming it with alacrity. Katara, for her part, just sipped her jasmine black tea and relaxed. She and Sokka had spent most of the previous evening drafting the plans, and she had confidence in her brother’s engineering expertise if not her own.

After a few minutes of squinting and humming thoughtfully to himself, Aujak placed the paper back onto the table and resettled himself officiously. “This… isn’t completely unreasonable, Master Katara, but while I was not there personally during their attempted kidnapping of Avatar Korra, I have gotten reports from all of the sentries that were present. If those criminals were truly determined to escape, this configuration would place you in a great deal of danger. Even if I assigned all of the sentries I had planned to guard those prisons to you, I could not guarantee your safety.”

Katara shook her head. “You don’t have to. Depending on how my initial interviews with those four go, this is hopefully just a precautionary—and temporary—measure.

“Tell me, Aujak; who did you have in mind to instruct Korra to help her gain mastery of the four elements?”

Aujak frowned at the seeming non-sequitur. “Well, of course Korra’s parents want you to instruct her in waterbending, and we both know your son is the only real option for airbending training, though that as Korra’s last element is some years away. As for the earth and fire, while ideally Toph and Fire Lord Zuko would be free to teach Korra as they taught Avatar Aang, Toph has made herself… unavailable, and I sincerely doubt the Fire Lord would be able to take the time necessary to train someone up to mastery in firebending. There are a number of earth and firebending masters in the Order I believe who would be up to the task, however. Why do you ask?”

Katara ignored the question in favor of posing some of her own. “So you agree with me that the ideal would be Korra getting trained by the world’s greatest bending prodigies, just as my husband was? That the way for an Avatar to reach her full potential is to learn from the best she can find?”

Aujak waved that away. “Yes, of course, that is a given, but why-?” It was only then that he seemed to notice her growing smile, and all that entailed. “No. Absolutely not. They tried to kidnap Korra, they nearly _killed_ your own brother; how could you even contemplate letting any of them anywhere near her?”

At that, Katara had to snort. “Oh my, you’re right, how could I consider the possibility that having a great bender who tried to relentlessly capture the Avatar and beat up Sokka might make for a good bending teacher for that same Avatar? I can’t think of where I might have gotten that idea. We’d better think of something else; maybe Zuko will step down for his daughter in a few years and he’ll be willing to spend his retirement showing Korra how to better set things on fire.” She tilted her head thoughtfully to one side. “Hm.”

Aujak glared at her irritably. “That was an entirely different situation and you know it. You could have been describing Princess Azula there just as well as Fire Lord Zuko. By all accounts, she was even more talented than her brother; I haven’t heard any stories of you clamoring for _her_ to teach Aang.”

“I wasn’t clamoring for Zuko, either,” Katara pointed out. “And I’m not saying that I’ll be doing so for these four; that’s why I want to meet them. Sometimes there really is no one better for someone to learn from than an enemy, and we don’t know _why_ they were after Korra. If they don’t present a threat to her well-being, then tell me; can you picture any more worthy an earthbending teacher than someone who can bend _lava_ , something not even Toph ever attempted? Any better a firebending teacher than one than can _combustion_ bend, an art so lost we didn’t even know it still existed? Can you even begin to envision what an Avatar trained by them would be like?”

“The most powerful Avatar that ever lived,” Aujak breathed, looking starry-eyed just as Katara knew he would; for all that Aujak was not truly what she would consider power-hungry, he still longed to leave his mark on the world, and his decision to dedicate his life to the White Lotus made it clear what form he wanted that mark to take. But he was too pragmatic an individual to let even that vision enthrall him for long; he soon shook it off and gave Katara a sharp-eyed look. “But why do you think that they’d _agree_ to this? The closest any of them have gotten to even talking was the waterbender trying to bite someone.”

“There are only two reasons for someone to kidnap the Avatar instead of just killing her outright,” Katara said. “The first is the one the Fire Nation had during the Hundred Year War: to ensure that no Avatar will be able to work against them for the foreseeable future by keeping the Avatar locked away and thus prevent them from reincarnating. The second is the one I’m hoping for: because they don’t trust whoever currently has the Avatar, and they want to train her themselves.

“If that’s the case, we won’t need to convince them; for them, if the options are between having no access to the Avatar at all and getting to control at least some part of her tutelage, then they’ll see getting to be Korra’s teachers as a _privilege_ , not them doing us a favor. If it’s a privilege, it’s something we can use to guarantee their cooperation through the threat of taking it away; why would they try to escape if they’re exactly where they want to be?”

“If that _is_ what they want,” Aujak pointed out. “There’s an equal chance that they were after Korra for the first reason, or some other you haven’t thought of.”

Korra shrugged. “If that’s the case, I’ll have a harrowing twelve years of trying to convince them of the error of their ways while simultaneously trying to avoid getting murdered in my sleep, and you will have to find Korra different, slightly less able earth and firebending masters. But I’m willing to take the time to find out.”

Aujak nodded thoughtfully, then pulled out a pen and scribbled something on the bottom of the plans before sliding them back across the table to Katara. “You at least have my approval to reallocate White Lotus resources towards building this holding facility, since it sounds like this is the best we’re going to get with your and Chief Sokka’s… misgivings blocking stronger measures being taken; fortunately, no matter how your interviews turn out, it will be several years before Korra even needs to start thinking about her earthbending training, so hopefully by then we will have a better read on these convicts’ characters, if only through them having killed you and fled into the night.”

Katara smiled as she rolled up the paper. “Exactly what I was thinking.” She stood and bowed deeply at the waist. “Thank you so much for your time and cooperation, Aujak. I think with a little luck, in the end this will turn out for the best for all of us.”

Aujak pushed himself to his feet and returned her bow. “Always a pleasure to speak with you, Master Katara.”

If there was a slightly ironic lilt to his voice, Katara was gracious enough in her victory to ignore it and just smiled again before turning to leave. Before she made her way out the door, Aujak’s voice intruded once more. “You do realize, of course, Master Katara, that I am not the one who needs convincing when it comes to deciding who Korra’s bending masters will be. All things considered, I think I may be comparatively… how is it the Earth Kingdom peasants put it? ‘Low hanging fruit?’”

Her back to Aujak, Katara allowed herself a wince before she replied smoothly, “I’ll be sure to take that under advisement. Thank you again, Aujak. I suspect we’ll be seeing each other again quite soon.”

If only Aujak were wrong. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how she was going to sell this to Tonraq and Senna.

\--*Red*--

“The construction of the White Lotus’s prisons has already been shut down, but the Order is still understandably concerned with Korra’s safety. You and your companions have committed a grievous trespass against the Avatar, and as you have consistently refused to answer any of the White Lotus’s questions, they know basically nothing about you except your fighting capabilities, which meant that they felt compelled to assume a worst-case scenario when deciding on how you would be imprisoned.

“I thought I could do better. You would literally have to be both stark raving mad and a sadistic mastermind of the highest order for what the White Lotus had planned for you to be even remotely appropriate, and considering what my brother told me of his battle with you, that seemed… unlikely.

“So I appreciate your candidness.” Katara smiled. “It made my job a lot easier.”

Zaheer stared at her, blank faced. Only the seemingly compulsive flexing of his hands in his lap revealed any hint of unease. “So what have you decided to do with us?”

“A prison is still being built for you, though this one is far more humane and has been designed for long-term human habitation. You will be living under my supervision, with a number of White Lotus acting as your guards, also under my supervision. Depending on your conduct, certain privileges will be granted to you.

“After twelve years have passed, assuming you have not committed any more crimes in the meantime, you will be released.”

When he was concentrating on it, Zaheer’s poker face really was quite good, Katara thought. If it weren’t so close to a full moon, she probably wouldn’t have even noticed how his heartbeat sped up when he asked, “And my friends?”

Katara smiled. “Well, I certainly cannot supervise four separate prisons at the same time. The current plan is to house all four of you at the same facility. The extent of the interaction allowed between you will be based on that conduct I mentioned earlier, but as I want to ensure all of us are on the same page as early on as possible, you will be seeing them again as soon as the construction of your prison has been completed, which I have been assured will be before the month is out, seeing as the White Lotus can now dedicate all of their resources to one project instead of splitting them four ways.”

At that, Zaheer’s heartbeat actually spiked even further for a few seconds before he took a deep breath and closed his eyes in a thoughtful frown before he opened them and leveled another stare at Katara. “So what would you have us do?”

Katara clucked her tongue in thought. “Well, I was planning on bringing my library along with me, but I suspect you will burn through that long before twelve years have passed. I am still wrangling with the White Lotus over whether you should get an exercise room-”

“I meant for you. What do you want us to do for _you_? Master Katara.”

Katara raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I want anything from you?”

“Because no one gives something for nothing. You cannot expect me to believe that you would give up twelve years of your life to overseeing the detention of four people you’ve never met who attempted to kidnap the Avatar. No one is that altruistic, not even you.”

Katara cracked a smile. “Well, I needed _something_ to do for my retirement.” When Zaheer did not return her smile, she sighed and let it drop from her face. Perhaps she did owe him at least a little sincerity. “I am an old woman, and I have seen a lot of evil in my life. I learned a long time ago to separate the acts from the individuals committing them, and I have seen what answering a wrong with further wrongs perpetuates. It helps no one, and it eventually hurts everyone involved.

“When I was young, the White Lotus was a great organization, headed by some of the most laudable men of the age. It is not what it once was, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be that way again, one day. I have to believe that, because if it isn’t true, then it is very likely that my husband’s request that they more involve themselves in the affairs of the world has forever desecrated that which is the only thing besides the Avatar to transcend the divisions of the world’s nations.

“If I allowed what they had planned for you and your friends to come to pass, that day would never come. The White Lotus could use the excuse of needing to protect the Avatar as much as they liked, but an organization which would do such a thing is not one that deserves the backing and support of the Southern Water Tribe, much less the right of being anywhere near little Korra. There would be no beauty, or truth, or philosophical meaning found in locking you and your comrades away forever without even the pretense of justice being served. A world-ranging organization that initiates atrocities in the Avatar’s name would not be the White Lotus, just a cruel mockery that stole its name to pervert its original mission.

“I refuse to let it come to that while I still live. And so… here I am.”

Halfway through her little monologue, Zaheer had gained the strangest look on his face, and though it hadn’t faded by the time she finished, Katara still couldn’t read what he was thinking. After a long moment in which he just stared at her, she started to feel a little self-conscious. “What is it?”

As if her words broke a spell, Zaheer startled, then shook his head as if to banish some errant thought. “Nothing. I just… I agree with you.”

Katara tried another smile. “You don’t need to sound quite that surprised.”

By the look on Zaheer’s face, it seemed that he did. “You truly do not want anything from us?”

Katara shrugged. “Well, I have some suggestions for what you and your friends should do with your time, but nothing I’d consider compulsory.” Zaheer’s undivided attention was encouraging, so Katara continued, “Am I right in thinking that if you succeeded in kidnapping Korra, your friends intended to instruct her in her bending training?” At Zaheer’s wary nod, she asked, “Do you think they’d still want to?”

She had known him less than an hour, but Katara was still pretty sure she numbered among only an honored few—if she wasn’t the only one—to have ever seen Zaheer look completely poleaxed.

\--*White*--

As she fiddled with her cup of oolong served with camel yak milk, Katara idly wondered if there was, in fact, something like having too much tea. The memory of Iroh told her no, of course not, how could she even think that, while some remnant of Sokka asked her why the hell she was thinking about tea when she was there to try and persuade Tonraq and Senna that it was a good idea to choose their daughter’s attempted kidnappers as her bending masters.

Unfortunately, in this instance, Sokka had more of a point. Katara took a sip of her oolong before placing it back on the table and moving her focus to Tonraq and Senna, who had been patiently chatting with each other on the other end of their table while she gathered her thoughts. “You two must be still quite shaken after what happened.”

As if on reflex, Tonraq and Senna’s hands reached out and clasped together, and they shared a look before turning back to Katara, Senna attempting a brave smile. “It’s been a tough few weeks. I know Korra is safer in the White Lotus’s compound and we can visit her whenever we want, but she already feels so far away. I have to say, it makes both of us feel a lot better that you’re moving closer to the compound soon to start Korra’s waterbending training. She could do with a familiar face. She’s good at hiding it, but I know she must be lonely with all those strangers around.”

Katara nodded and tried to look wise and reassuring. Sokka and Aang had told her she had always been good at that, but Katara privately agreed more with Toph’s assessment that it made her look slightly constipated (even if she’d responded at the time with ‘how would you know’). “I was planning on giving Korra another month or two to settle in before I began training her, but I will be visiting her as frequently as I can before then. Unfortunately, circumstances have dictated that won’t be as often as I’d originally hoped.

“Recent events have convinced Sokka to put the four who tried to kidnap Korra into my custody, and I will have to dedicate a great deal of my time to watching over them.” It was impossible to miss the shock on both their faces that quickly transformed into bewilderment for Senna and badly restrained fury for Tonraq, but she did her best to bully on through. “I will still be able to act as Korra’s waterbending master, but she will be spending a lot of her time surrounded entirely by members of the White Lotus. Part of why I’m here is to suggest that—despite Aujak’s original suggestions to the contrary—both of you move into the compound to be with your daughter. I know-”

Tonraq held up a hand. “Excuse me, Master Katara.” Katara waited politely as Tonraq took a deep breath, exhaled, then completely failed to contain his temper. “You mean to tell me that those four bastards who tried to kidnap _our_ little girl will be imprisoned close enough to the compound that you can _commute_?”

Katara sighed. There wasn’t really a good way to put this. “Yes. It _would_ ,” she said, raising her voice on the last word when it looked like Tonraq was about to interject again, “Allow the White Lotus to consolidate their forces such that they could better deal with any threats to Korra, much like the one you are worrying about right now. Distance doesn’t matter if it doesn’t do anything to help protect Korra, which in this case it wouldn’t since all the White Lotus at the South Pole are already currently stationed at the compound, meaning an extra few days’ warning would do nothing to help guard her against attack. The sentries assigned to guard the prison are to be drawn from elsewhere, so its presence here will actually increase the number of White Lotus permanently stationed within a relevant distance to Korra.”

“An extra few days’ warning is the reason Chief Sokka, Fire Lord Zuko, and Master Tenzin were present to help guard Korra against those criminals in the first place,” Tonraq growled, though his wife’s hand on his arm at least prevented another outburst.

“You were _told_ of the kidnapping attempt three days before it happened. My brother had actually received the tip over a month beforehand,” Katara said calmly. “He independently confirmed some details and made sure he could marshal some extra help before he alerted you to the danger; he knew an ambush against the kidnappers wouldn’t work if they knew he knew they were coming, so he kept it quiet from as many people as possible for as long as possible. Three days in reality would at best have garnered you my brother and a few Southern Water Tribe warriors.

“From what he told me of the battle, that wouldn’t have been enough. And it won’t be enough in the future, either, not until Korra is fully trained and able to take care of herself.”

In what Katara appreciated as an attempt to break the tension (which failed, but it was nice she tried), Senna smiled weakly and said, “I am beginning to see the wisdom of your suggestion of moving in with Korra.”

Tonraq’s eyes had narrowed, but at least he was back to normal speaking volume when he said, “I as well. You said to make that suggestion was part of why you are here, Master Katara; so, what other reason do you have for gracing us in our home?” To his credit, he did not sound in the least sarcastic, but Katara still had to hold back a wince.

She had to take a deep breath herself before she could continue. What she had to say next was not something any decent parent would want to hear. “It is a hard truth to face that the life of the Avatar is one full of risk. That is not to say that Korra will be alone or unhappy—Aang certainly wasn’t—but she will have enemies, powerful ones, the vast majority of whom will target her not because of who she is, but what she is.

“The four who tried to kidnap Korra might very well number among the least dangerous she will face in her lifetime. Not because of what they’re capable of—I’ve heard enough about them to know they likely number amongst the most powerful benders alive—but by the simple fact that they did not want to see her harmed. That will, sadly, be incredibly rare.

“The only way we can be sure that we have done our best to ensure that Korra will be up to the trials she will face as she grows into her role as the Avatar is to find her the best teachers possible, both bending masters and for all matters she will be forced to deal with as the bringer of balance between the different nations, the spirits, and mankind.”

Senna and Tonraq already knew all of this, but Katara was hoping that in the wake of the recent scare, they would finally be able to internalize it. The way they looked at each other—grim, but determined—made her think that her hopes might be well founded, but Senna, at least, still looked confused. “I’m sorry if this is rude, Master Katara, but this isn’t anything new. Why are you telling us this?”

Katara sighed again. “And I’m sorry to answer your question with another question: if you agree with me, who do you think should be Korra’s bending masters?”

Senna and Tonraq shared another look. Senna answered tentatively, “Well, of course there is you, Master Katara, and your son Tenzin. We would love it if Toph and Fire Lord Zuko were free to teach her as well once Korra is ready for her earth and firebending training, but we understand that they likely won’t be available.” Katara had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes; it was obvious they had been talking to Aujak. “We have been assured, however, that Korra will be taught the best bending masters the White Lotus has at their disposal.”

“Well,” said Katara blandly after a moment, once it was obvious that neither Tonraq nor Senna got what she was driving at, “Now it has several more at its disposal than it did a month ago.”

That, they got.

“You must be joking.” Tonraq sounded as if he had flown straight past anger and unexpectedly found himself in a land of eerie calm.

“Perhaps,” Katara allowed calmly in return. “I haven’t yet taken my measure of their characters. But I have heard enough to make some inferences, and there is an equally good chance that I am not.

“This is already still incredibly hypothetical, of course; Korra will be focused on her waterbending training for the foreseeable future. But much of my time will also be spent with those four, and I suspect I will get to know them quite well in the coming years. There are many reasons why they might have wished to take Korra, and some of them, while still misguided, could still be rooted in good intentions.

“If that turns out to be the case—if they present no threat to Korra—then would it not be better to take advantage of their talents then to let them languish away in prison, doing no good for anybody? She will face dangers in her lifetime that we likely cannot even conceive of; the best we can do is make certain she is prepared to meet them.

“Knowing as you do that the quality of a person’s bending is dependent in large part on the skill of her masters, would you not want your daughter to be trained by the greatest benders our world has to offer, no matter what they have done in the past?”

Tonraq’s mouth opened in what was obviously going to be an angry retort, but the touch of his wife’s hand on his arm stayed him. Senna, for her part, did not look away from Katara, her normally placid eyes dark and her lips pressed together in a thin, determined line. “Can you guarantee her safety?”

“Even if I have determined to my satisfaction that they have no desire to hurt Korra, there would be a number of White Lotus guards at each of her training sessions, along with at least two masters if I am not able to be present myself. No chances would be taken with her.” It wasn’t a yes, not really, but it was the best Katara could give.

Senna’s mouth pursed in thought, then she seemed to come to some kind of decision. “We will have to meet them as well, before they get anywhere near Korra.”

“Of course.”

Tonraq gave his wife a somewhat incredulous look, but when Senna still didn’t look away from Katara, he huffed quietly and seemed to settle into himself before he said, “And I’d like to see these training sessions. I don’t care how dedicated these White Lotus are, they can’t match a parent’s devotion. And we’ve already confirmed _I_ at least am good enough to hold one of them off if they’re stupid enough to try something.”

Katara smiled and did her best to project an air of having expected things to work out how she wanted all along. She was having to project a lot of things she didn’t actually feel these days, and probably would for years to come. Even if matters were actually working out even better than she’d hoped, the thought was still exhausting.

Maybe the memory of Iroh was worth listening to after all, and there was no such thing as too much tea. “More than reasonable,” she said, and poured some more oolong into her cup.

\--*Red*--

“I… what?”

“With some caveats and restrictions, Korra’s parents have agreed to let your friends assist in Korra’s bending training,” Katara explained patiently. “Considering how monotonous I imagine your imprisonment will be, I thought they might be amenable to getting out at least occasionally, even if it would be to a White Lotus compound.

“Think of it as community service.”

“Community service.” Zaheer sounded skeptical.

“Well, it’s better than being boiled alive in oil,” Katara said with a grin.

That just made Zaheer look alarmed. “Is that… the alternative?”

Katara was abruptly reminded of why she had never been considered the funny one in her family. “No, that was… what I am now realizing was a really bad joke that you have no reason to get. Never mind.”

Thankfully, Zaheer seemed to take her directive to heart, because he went on as if that unfortunate exchange never happened and asked, “Why would you even think of allowing that?”

Katara shrugged and rearranged her parka around herself; the cell really was too cold. She was going to have to talk to the sentries about that after she left. “Tonraq and Senna agree that Korra should be taught by the most powerful benders available if they don’t present a danger to her, and from what I’ve heard, your friends are very powerful. Whether or not they are dangerous to her remains to be seen, but I am willing to entertain the possibility that they are not. If that proves to be true, they will be allowed to train her in bending. Only one at a time, of course, and Korra won’t be starting her earth or firebending training for at least a few years, but they would have face-to-face—albeit supervised—access to the Avatar over however long it takes for Korra to master their respective elements. Past records have indicated that elemental mastery for an Avatar is usually considered reached after about four years of intensive training per element.”

“So if young Korra adheres to that schedule, she will have mastered fire around the same time we are to be released,” Zaheer murmured. “That seems… oddly convenient.”

Katara beamed. “Isn’t it? Coincidence can be a wonderful thing in life.”

At that, Zaheer actually smiled slightly, though he still said, “But you still haven’t answered my question. Why would _you_ think of allowing that? However you convinced her parents, you must have had something else in mind.”

It briefly occurred to Katara to say something flippant like _you give me so much credit_ , but she was going to be spending an awful lot of time around Zaheer for the foreseeable future; better to at least establish a foundation of honesty, if only to make things easier for everyone in the long run. “A large part of the reason it was traditional in the past for the Avatar to travel to each of their bending masters instead of the other way around is that it gave the Avatar a chance to live in different parts of the world, allowing them to see how the people of the different nations lived their lives. It gave the Avatar a greater understanding of different perspectives, letting them be the Avatar of all the world’s nations instead of just the Avatar of the nation they came from.

“Korra is going to lack those experiences. She isn’t even really going to get the chance to be an Avatar for the Southern Water Tribe. The only point of view she is ever going to see in any detail until her training is complete is that of the White Lotus.

“Even if I agreed entirely with everything the White Lotus believed, that isn’t healthy. A young person should have their opinions challenged so they can grow. An Avatar who has never been taught that what they believe could be wrong has no reason to be anything other than close-minded, and cannot hope to see things from the perspectives of others. What kind of balance could such an Avatar provide, if they only ever stand on one end of the scale?

“I hope to provide one of those other points of view. I was hoping you and your friends could provide another.” When Zaheer did not immediately nod, his brow furrowed as if he was still lost in thought, Katara said mildly, “I thought myself quite clever, to be honest, when I thought of such an elegant solution. It was brainwashing you were worried about, yes? Korra being indoctrinated so thoroughly into the White Lotus’s philosophy that she would take for granted the necessity of actions and beliefs they sanction that she might otherwise recognize as inherently broken.

“Which isn’t to say that knowing that philosophy isn’t _useful_ ; after all, many people agree with it, and she is their Avatar too. It just shouldn’t be the only philosophy Korra knows.

“What I can only hope to do is provide her with enough information that when she is old enough to forge her own path, it is not one tread out of ignorance of there being a better way, whatever she decides that to be.

“So I suppose what I am asking is: will you help me, and do you think your friends could be convinced to help me as well?”

Zaheer still took another moment to respond, but then he grinned seemingly despite himself, the expression half hidden behind his hair. Katara noted distantly that it looked like whatever the White Lotus had put him through, he still had all of his teeth, so that was at least one less thing she would have to fix. “I have met a lot of terrifying people in my life, but of all of them, Master Katara, I believe you scare me the most. May I say I am glad you never elected to join the White Lotus?”

At that, Katara had to blink, feeling slightly nonplussed. She hadn’t heard herself be described as terrifying in years. And here she thought she had done so well making it seem as if she had mellowed out in her old age. “… Is that a yes or a no?”

In response, Zaheer—still smiling in a somewhat bemused fashion—placed his palms together and ducked his head; it took Katara a second to recognize that he was attempting an aborted bow. “I may reconsider once I have gotten a good night’s sleep and a hot meal, but as of now, I would be honored, Master Katara, to assist you in your endeavor.” Some thought, however, quickly cut the good humor from his expression. “I do not know, however, how you will fare with my friends. Even though we share many of the same beliefs, they tend to be less…” he waved his hand vaguely as if rooting through the air for the correct word, “… philosophical, than myself.”

Katara raised an eyebrow. “Is that a polite way of informing me that all of them are likely to tell me to go to hell the moment I walk into their cells?”

Zaheer’s answering grimace looked pained. “… probably not Ghazan.”

The name wasn’t Water Tribe, but beyond that Katara had no idea. “Which one is that?”

The look on Zaheer’s face was complicated, to say the least. He didn’t seem to know whether to look sheepish or smirk, and in the end decided on a blandness that did nothing to hide either his chagrin or his smugness on his friends’ behalf. “None of them have talked at all, have they.”

“Apparently there has been a great deal of cursing. And threats. Half the reason I started with you is that I was told that you were the only one who would occasionally respond to the sentries’ questions, even if they did describe what you have said as a bunch of ‘metaphysical, irritating bullshit.’

“As I would appreciate not being threatened any more this week, how do you think I should best open with your friends? Or do you think this should all wait until the prison is finished and I can talk to all of you at the same time?”

Zaheer shook his head. “Even with direct orders to the contrary, I don’t trust the White Lotus to stop acting as if they are still in charge unless you make your interest in this matter clear to their guards. Also, if my friends’ interrogators have used the same techniques as mine, they will have been told what the White Lotus had in store for them; I would prefer it if they did not spend the next few weeks operating under the assumption that they were still facing that kind of…” Zaheer paused again, though this time he seemed to be rooting for a better word not for the sake of accuracy but because he couldn’t think of a way to adequately describe the White Lotus’s planned prisons without degenerating into a torrent of violent swearing. “… situation.”

Katara hummed thoughtfully. “That would be unfortunate. Can you think of anything I could say that would make them at least willing to hear me out long enough for me to explain things? I doubt they would just believe me if I told them I brought word from you, for example.”

Zaheer seemed to mull it over; then he said, “I won’t be seeing any of them for several weeks, yes?”

“That’s correct. Not until your prison is complete and you are moved.”

“Then I think I can give you something for each of them that they know would come from me, but I want you to start with the firebender.”

Katara raised an eyebrow at the request. “Any particular reason?”

Zaheer smiled crookedly. “It is just a personal request; you said you would be willing to grant one as thanks for my ‘being so forthcoming.’” Zaheer didn’t sound nervous; he in fact sounded the most self-assured he had in their conversation thus far, but Katara could still feel his heartbeat speed up again as, at her agreeable nod, he looked past her at something else entirely and recited in a tone Katara couldn’t read, “You are the flame that illuminates my path; I wait for you at the next crossroads, because only with your light to guide me will I be certain that I have chosen the right way.”

Well. That explained an awful lot. And also raised a number of interesting questions Katara thought prudent to wait a few months to ask.

Katara had managed to revert her expression back into pleasant blankness by the time Zaheer focused on her again, and at his expectant look, she said agreeably, “Let me get out my pen and some paper; I think it would be easier for both of us if you just wrote everything down.”

\--***--

Katara automatically counted the number of White Lotus sentries as she approached the hastily constructed prison. Only eight at this one, which seemed odd considering that the firebender—whose name, Katara had realized only after she had left Zaheer’s cell, she had never learned, as somehow it seemed unlikely to be Ghazan—by all accounts was the most dangerous, and unlike with the waterbender, the White Lotus had not decided to keep her constantly drugged to stop her from gaining enough concentration to bend (though apparently that had done nothing to keep the waterbender from resorting to her teeth).

Of course, the vast majority of the waterbender’s destructive potential couldn’t be checked by shackling a metal plate over her forehead and chaining her hands together, either.

Other than the reduced number of sentries, Katara’s reception was much the same as it was at the last prison, as the sentries bowed respectfully at her approach and showed a similar lack of surprise when she approached the door. “Master Katara.”

She smiled in her most grandmotherly way. The expression was beginning to feel quite settled on her face. “Hello. Could you open the door, please?”

The sentry moved to do so readily enough, pulling a key from his belt and walking over to the solid iron door, but he hesitated before turning the key in the lock. “She may be chained up, but no matter how cold we make it, she still spits fire if she gets angry enough. Please be careful.” Only at her nod did he finally turn the key, brace himself in the snow, and pull open the door.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I deserve credit for writing a fic where one of the main characters is Zaheer and Guru Laghima isn’t mentioned even once. What he tells Katara he wants her to say to P’Li is a(n unrecognizably altered for my own purposes) quote by the Buddha, but I can’t imagine Zaheer makes up his own love poetry when he has several thousand years of Air Nomad proverbs to bastardize instead.
> 
> There are only going to be two stories for this series (ignoring perhaps a few drabbles), as I am very aware how writing an alternate universe can spiral out of control if you don’t have a definite vision setting out of where you want to stop. The second story should be about two or three times the length of this one (albeit separated into chapters), though I have miscalculated how long my stories will turn out before.
> 
> I tried to make the background of this fic adhere as closely to canon as possible. As far as Zaheer's age goes, besides his appearance we get exactly one clue from canon (this quote from The Stakeout): "I met your uncle when I was a teenager after we had both joined the Red Lotus." Since Zaheer didn't say, "When we were both teenagers," and it's a fairly safe assumption that Unalaq wasn't, say, 12 when he joined the Red Lotus, this heavily implies that Zaheer is at least a few years younger than Unalaq, who is Tonraq's younger brother, so I extrapolated from there.
> 
> As for Sokka, Tenzin, and Zuko being present at the Red Lotus's attempted kidnapping of Korra because of a tip, I just don't get why they'd all be there (and yet the Red Lotus wouldn't notice in time to reschedule their kidnapping attempt) if they didn't know something was going down ahead of time and planned accordingly.


End file.
